Werewolves Are Not Popular Dinner Guests
by Briana Rose
Summary: Tonks asks a favor from Remus, concerning a dinner party and several pieces of silverware. FINALLY FINISHED!
1. Part the First

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Werewolves Are Not Popular Dinner Guests

Part the First:

In Which a Wolf, Like In So Many Muggle Fairy Tales, Is Foiled Again

Remus Lupin liked to think that he did not ask for much from life. Was it so difficult to want to be able to read the _Daily Prophet _and have a nice hot cup of tea during the evenings?

It never had been. He'd been sitting in the parlor in Grimmauld Place on a pleasant Wednesday evening in mid-August. The window was open and a cool breeze floated in, making the room almost pleasant to him as he sat with said newspaper and cup of tea.

Ron and Hermione were in front of the fireplace having a heated argument. Remus had long since lost the thread of what they were arguing about and doubted very much it would matter if he did. He had learned to regard it as the rest did, more as a perpetual background noise than anything else. Ginny was spread out on the floor groaning in frustration at her summer-break homework while Harry next to her was having a heartfelt reunion with his newly recovered Firebolt. Things were, all in all, how Remus liked them. Granted that he wouldn't have minded Sirius sitting next to him mumbling irately about being kept inside on a beautiful day like this, what a crime _that_ was, but Remus had also decided worrying about things like that continually wouldn't help anyone in the end. Certainly he had a job that could result in the loss of his life at any moment, but he liked to think that the time in the parlor was pleasantly detached from all that.

A purple head appeared in the doorway suddenly. "Remus," it said in an all-too suspiciously cheerful manner, "can I speak to you in the kitchen?"

Remus must've looked worried, so Tonks grinned reassuringly. "Gee, Remus, I was only planning some mild torture for you, there's no need look so grim about it." The Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione all laughed, and Remus tried very hard to go along with them. He then tried to mimic Tonks' reassuring smile and failed quite miserably, so he was left with a very stupid sort of half-grin on his face that made him look altogether too much like a Jack-O-Lantern. He followed her down to the kitchen, where he sat down at the table and she faced him, leaning on the sink.

"Remus," she began, now sounding far too serious. "Let's say you had a friend who is the most wonderful, kind, and thoughtful person you know who never asks for a thing from anyone. And let's say that you asked this friend a huge favor. I mean a _gigantic _one, even though he, mind you, has never asked _anything _from you. Would you feel desperately unseemly for asking this _huge _favor?"

Remus considered his answer. He cleared his throat.

"That," he said, "depends on the gravity of the favor. If it's of the lend-me-a-few-coins variety I shouldn't think my friend would mind much, unless of course he was an excessively greedy and unpleasant person, but I believe we've already stressed he's not. If it's a more human-sacrifice category favor, well, I imagine I might find it a little awkward to ask my friend for such a thing."

Tonks shifted uncomfortably. "What if it sort of falls in the middle of those things?"

Remus shrugged. "Again, what exactly the favor is would matter a great deal to my friend."

Tonks sighed. "Let's say," she said, "that your parents were hosting this dinner party--"

"Ah, you see, there is the downfall in your logic. My parents have never, ever hosted a dinner party, as they've never had proper silverware for the event..."

Tonks, however, didn't seem to care much about the highly interesting story of why Remus' parents didn't have any suitable silverware for any sort of fancy party, for she waved a hand impatiently. "Listen, Remus, Saturday, my parents are having a dinner party, and of course they're inviting all their old, crusty friends, and I was hoping--"

"To invite some old, crusty friends of your own," he finished for her, and she grinned.

"Believe me, Remus, you're the fountain of youth when it comes to some of my parents' friends. Can't you _please_ come? No one else can, Hestia and Emmeline and nearly everyone else are all on patrol, and Kingsley, the little bugger, he heard me talking about it to my mother and actually volunteered to work for me so I could go to the damn thing. And it's not a full moon, I already checked, so don't use that excuse."

Now Remus shifted uncomfortably. He was beginning to think that he would've preferred a favor from the human sacrifice category. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tonks cut him off.

"And don't pretend you've got somewhere to go, Remus. I know. All the evenings you're not working you're in the parlor there playing chess with Ron or reading the paper or something boring like that."

He folded his arms indignantly. "I can't imagine why you're besmirching the good name of the Lupin/Weasley Chess Wars. Personally, I find them quite enjoyable."

"Do you?"

"Well, yes, I mean, I'm about _this_ close to actually beating him one of these times."

"That close?"

"Well, maybe that estimate is a little biased..." In fact, Remus suspected he was several miles away from beating Ron at chess, but these thoughts seemed unimportant. "And, well, you know, I told Ginny I'd help her with her Potions homework, I know she had a very difficult assignment from Severus on, er, Diluting Potions." Remus had never been a natural liar, that had been more of James and Sirius' forte, but looking at the one he had literally just pulled out of thin air he thought it rather well done.

Before Tonks could respond to his utter fabrication, Ginny chose the very inopportune moment to enter the kitchen. Remus had hoped, for one glorious moment, that he might be able to salvage the situation somehow by communicating to Ginny his little lie by the use of many extravagant gestures behind Tonks' back. Unfortunately, Ginny chose this moment to proclaim to both of them her relief at finally completing every single bit of her summer schoolwork and was there any of that pudding left from the other night? After discovering that there actually wasn't, that it had all been eaten by Ron some time the previous night, she looked on in surprise at the reactions of her previous statement on the two in front of her, from Remus, who had buried his face in his hands, to Tonks, who was smiling joyously. "Something wrong?" she asked through the bit of Harry's birthday cake she had dug out of the back of the icebox.

"Nothing's wrong," said Tonks cheerfully, walking up to Remus' chair. "Remus here," she said, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "was just consenting to coming to my parents' dinner party on Saturday. Weren't you, Remus?"

Seeing that he had dug himself into a hole that he couldn't claw his way out of without the aid of several pieces of advanced climbing equipment, Remus nodded from behind his hands.

"Well, that's nice," said Ginny brightly. "Now you can let someone else get murdered by Ron in chess."

Remus agreed from behind his hands that this was true.

A/N: I'm going to camp today, so how's about surprising me and leaving a lot of nice pretty reviews for when I come back on the 10th? : )


	2. Part the Second

A/N: Gah, I know, it's been a month. I didn't mention it, but I went to a Spanish camp. It's very hard after two full weeks of Spanish to stop speaking Spanglish. (It was a serious problem, I put in "comida" for food a couple of times when I wrote this.) You know how it is. Or perhaps you don't. I wouldn't know. Anyway, thank you so much to all who reviewed; I've never gotten so many before! Just one more thing, I apologize if Kreacher sounds funny. It's very hard to talk in only one tense. But enough nonsense:****

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**Werewolves Are Not Popular Dinner Guests**

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**Part the Second:**

**In Which the Previously Mentioned Wolf Expresses Surprise Over Numerous Issues **

"Mistress says Kreacher is to make sure the shabby-looking one leaves," said a bullfrog-like voice from behind Remus, "on time."

Remus sat up straight and tried to pull face that resembled something close to annoyance at having been interrupted in the middle of his chess game, though in fact he was a bit relieved, as he had already been foreseeing another terrific loss on his own part.

The house-elf was in a crouching position in the doorway of the parlor. Remus would say that he looked particularly sullen today, if it weren't that measuring the degree of sullenness on Kreacher's face on a daily basis was a bit like measuring how hot the sun was; the temperatures on the outer rim were already pretty hot and Remus didn't particularly like being burned.

"What's that?" asked Remus, expressing his surprise on several counts. One was seeing Kreacher out of his den at all. He'd been spending most of his time hidden away, and as most of Grimmauld Place's inhabitants had never possessed much inclination hold a conversation with him in the first place they had mostly let him be, save periodic checks that he was still in the house.

The other was that Kreacher had mentioned his "Mistress." As far as Remus knew, the only thoughts Mrs. Black had expressed (or, more accurately, shrieked) about him lately were why oh why that awful werewolf was here creating such a great stain on the purity of her house, oh the shame of it, and had therefore expressed no great concerns about his punctuality at all.

"Kreacher's filthy half-blood Mistress," continued Kreacher, "is wanting Kreacher to make sure the filthy half-breed is leaving the house on time. Kreacher is only too pleased but is very disappointed when he finds out the filthy half-breed comes back later."

"You know," said Fred from the sofa, where he was perusing an issue of the _Quibbler _upside down (Fred was upside down, not the _Quibbler_), "you use that word, _filthy_, so much. We do take baths around here."

Kreacher spouted a few well-chosen words on that that Remus really didn't feel like responding to in the vague, impersonal manner he usually used when dealing with Kreacher. He had just realized what Kreacher was talking about when he referred to his "filthy, half-blood Mistress."

A few months before he had died, Sirius had apparently managed to convince Kreacher to take orders from Tonks. His reasons for doing this had never been adequately explained to Remus, as he'd been away at the time. " 'Cos I felt like messing with his head," was how Sirius would respond absently when asked, showing, to Remus at least, that he'd done it mostly because arguing with Kreacher was the only thing around to do and he had been bored, but that made sense. It seemed the reason Sirius did most of the things he did. Or had done. (Remus hated having to convert everything to do with Sirius into a past tense. That had to be one of the worst things about death.)

Now Remus couldn't help but wish Sirius had taught himself how to play the accordion or something, like _normal _people did when they were bored. Tonks had apparently told Kreacher to tail Remus incessantly to make sure he made good on his promise.

"All right, Kreacher," said Remus, turning back to the chess board, where Ron's knight was, completely to Remus's surprise, taking out his queen.

"I really hate knights," mumbled Remus.

"Eh?" said Ron vaguely, as he organized the small army Remus's chess pieces he had collected.

"What with their tricky little L-shapes, smug little--"

"Your move, Professor."

"Right." Remus prodded his castle, which moved forward to take out, quite unspectacularly, one of Ron's many remaining pawns.

Several minutes later:

"That's checkmate," said Ron, smiling and sitting back, his hands behind his head.

"What?!"

"Right there, the bishop's taking out the king."

"Oh. So it is." Remus couldn't help but notice how hostile his old chess pieces had gotten towards him lately, and also how docile they were getting in the face of defeat; they were hardly putting up a fight anymore. He supposed this all had to do with all the times he had gotten them hit over the head in the past few weeks. He looked at his watch and sighed heavily. "Well, I'd better go." He stood up. "Good-bye."

"Have a nice time," said Hermione from an armchair, where she sat curled up with a book (one Ginny had lent her, a rather salacious memoir of a teen witch called _Dabbles with Dragons and Other Hot Magical Creatures_ that Hermione didn't seem to like at all, for every so often she would wrinkle her nose and snort in disgust at it.)

"Oh, I will, don't worry..."

* * *

After Remus had left, Ginny said, "He didn't look very happy, did he?"

Hermione shrugged. "Can't be that bad, can it? Going to the Tonkses' for a little dinner party? Wonder why he looked so down."

Ron let out a laugh. " 'Course he's upset! I just beat him for the...what number we on now?"

"Sixteen," chorused Fred, George, and Harry.

"Sixteenth time," Ron continued. "Merlin, he's persistent, isn't he? I would've given up long before that if I was him. Sixteen times..."

Remus was reflecting on this number as he arrived at the Tonkses' large house in the country. He'd been so _good_ at chess when he was younger, dammit. The sight of him with a chessboard had been enough to make the entire Gryffindor common room scatter! (Well, at least Remus liked to think it had been the chess board.) What had happened? He must be losing his touch, he concluded as he entered the foyer. Yes, that must be it...

Chess-related thoughts, while not particularly glamorous, were on Remus' mind as he entered the living room. The room itself was quite nice, with a large number of bay windows that looked out over a blue lake, but the people in it were what made Remus' mind revert back to chess and how he lost his place as a cunning strategist in the game.

"Remember when I said all my parents' friends were old and crusty?" said a voice from behind him.

Remus was torn away from thoughts of how he had foolishly squandered the opening to Ron's queen and he turned around. Tonks stood there in sleek black robes, her hair a dismal brown and swept up in the back. She looked, all in all, very glum.

"Yes," he said. "I remember you saying something like that."

"I'm afraid I wasn't quite accurate in that statement. Unfortunately. Turn around."

He did and saw, much to his surprise, Percy Weasley had appeared by the punch bowl laughing loudly with an old warlock Remus didn't know (but based on how much Percy was laughing, Remus guessed it was someone important) with a rather nervous young woman with curly hair Remus remembered from Hogwarts as Penelope Clearwater.

"He works in the office with my mother. It's good I didn't ask Bill or Arthur or Molly to come. Suppose I thought I'd spare them of it all, out of common humanity."

Remus pointed out with some indignation that she had invited him to come and asked if her idea of showing common humanity didn't extend to those who got a little hot under the collar around the full moon. He smiled to show that he was joking, but she looked, if possible, even more unhappy after he said this.

"You're right. It was rather mean of me to subject you to all this." She cast a hand around the room of people that landed on Percy Weasley, who had caught sight of his former teacher. So had Penelope Clearwater, but when she had started over to say hello Percy had grabbed her by the sleeve of her mauve dress robes and together they inched slowly in the opposite direction. Remus turned his back to them.

"Now really, I do think you're being a tad rough on this ol' shindig. It's not nearly as bad as some parties I've been to."

"Oh?"

"I remember New Year's Eve...it must've been the year before Harry was born, we had a party at Sirius' flat."

"How'd that go?"

"Pretty badly. He didn't even have a clock."

She snorted. "What happened to it?"

"I think Sirius threw it out the window. Why? I dunno, he thought it was a Frisbee or something, how should I know? I don't claim to be in a real solid state of mind at the time either."

Remus laughed but stopped when he realized who he had been talking about and noticed Tonks had as well. He then tried to back-track out of the pit of melancholy he often felt he slipped into while thinking about Sirius. He really didn't feel like going through it all _now,_ when he had managed to have a moderately pleasant conversation with someone who wasn't sixteen years old and beating the hell out of him in chess. Before he or Tonks could flounder any more in the awkward pause in their conversation, there was a yell from across the sea of heads.

"Nymphadora! Come here, Cookie's here! Ooh, and is that Remus? Both of you, come now, you can't hide by the punch bowl forever, you know!"

Tonks shuddered, though whether it was because of her mother calling her over or being called by her hated Christian name or the mention of this Cookie woman or perhaps a mix of all these things, Remus didn't know.

Nevertheless, he followed her after seeing that Percy seemed to have spread word of his identity to the surrounding people and that now they, too, had taken to edging away from him cautiously.

* * *

"Cookie is my godmother," Tonks explained as she led Remus through the crowd. (He felt a bit like Moses crossing the Red Sea, with all these people giving him such a wide berth.)

"Do you know," added Tonks, "how hard it is to show respect to a woman named _Cookie_?"

"I could only imagine."

"Don't even try. It's very hard. Especially when you're six years old."

Tonks' godmother Cookie was a woman with small feet and a small head but with a very wide waist. She was sort of shaped like one of the spinning tops Remus' father had showed him when he was very young. She wore too much lipstick and had very large hair. Her eyes narrowed when she saw her goddaughter arrive with a strange man she didn't know. ("Aunt Cookie's very into most social gossipy-things." Tonks had told him. "She'll be very put out she doesn't know you.") But Andromeda's face lit up. She threw her arms around him, taking him by surprise.

"Remus, it's good to see you. You never come 'round anymore."

Back when he had first ran away from home, Sirius had been invited over quite often for dinner and had often brought Remus along with (" 'Cos Moony's always in need of a good meal," Sirius would say, grinning), and they had both always enjoyed it. After the war had ended Remus had stopped the visits, thinking that he was a rather tragic reminder of a man they really didn't want to remember.

Andromeda was now introducing him.

"This is Remus Lupin, he was a very good friend of my late cousin."

"How do you do?" asked Cookie absently. She didn't wait for an answer before turning back to Andromeda. "If you don't mind, I must find Prudence, she's gotten off again, little scamp. I'll see you both at dinner."

Remus thought he should add that he would be at dinner too, but then realized that there was no point in making her unhappy with the information.

Tonks was staring at her godmother's back in horror. "_Prudence?_ She didn't mean—,"

"P.K.'s here, and don't look so horrified," said her mother sternly.

"Horrified? I'm not horrified, I'm simply fearful for all the guests' welfare, if that little hellion is here…"

Andromeda gave her a rather stern look. "There's nothing _wrong _with P.K. She's just rather…"

"Evil," Tonks finished for her.

"Who's this now?" asked Remus, rather amused at how perturbed Tonks seemed to be.

"Prudence Katherine," Andromeda explained. "She's Cookie's daughter. She's going into Hogwarts next year and she and Nymphadora have never quite hit it off…"

"Understatement of the century," muttered Tonks. "You'll want to watch out for her, Remus. She's a menace."

Andromeda rolled her eyes again. "I've got to go see that dinner's ready. We should be eating in a few minutes, I'll see you both at dinner."

Remus watched her go and then turned back to Tonks, who was eyeing the whole room warily.

"I find it funny that a Ministry-trained Auror like yourself seems to be in fear of a nine-year-old girl," he said, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice now.

Tonks glared at him. "She's ten. And it's simply because I'd like to keep this evening as it is now, merely an unpleasant drudge through some of the Ministry's less than savory personnel, than what it could be with P.K. around."

"What's that?"

"Hell," replied Tonks, who then sighed heavily, and swept away.

Remus looked around. He couldn't think of anything else to do but follow her in her mad search for the girl.

It was going to be, he decided, an interesting night.

**NEXT CHAPTER: **In which Remus discovers what young children do when adults are not around and why parental supervision is such an important thing.


	3. Part the Last

**A/N: **Rumors of my demise have been...highly exaggerated. Really. Do you realize that if I was the Virgin Mary when I last updated this story, I would've Immaculately Conceived and given birth to Jesus Christ already? Food for thought there.

Anyway, here it is.

**Werewolves Are Not Popular Dinner Guests **

**Part the Last:**

**In Which a Young Woman Rethinks the Direction of Her Life and the Wolf Grapples with Chronic Unemployment and Nonexistent Rent**

Tonks had been derailed from her search for Prudence Katherine by her boss. Since Remus and Edmund Dawlish had had historically very little to say to each other, Remus had wandered off in another direction entirely.

Tonks, meanwhile, was pondering if indeed she had been correct in her choice of career. After studying closely the two of the more senior members of the profession, she wondered if maybe she should have thought over the decision a little more.

First there was Moody. One look at Mad-Eye made you question whether you wanted to spend time in the same room with him, much less share an occupation. And while he treated you with a touching bit of protectiveness when you got to know him (or if you enrolled in the same secret society as him, as it were,) to most people he had about all the likability of a rabid hyena, which didn't exactly serve as a recruitment tool for his (former) profession.

Still, at least rabid hyenas got the blood pumping. Edmund Dawlish was adulthood's answer to Professor Binns. But while listening to Professor Binns was like placing your ear next to a vacuum, listening to Dawlish was like listening to a whole choir of them screaming their arses off.

While Dawlish told her and several other people who were too polite or simply too pounded into a deep stupor to find an excuse to wander off to the refreshment table about a wizard from Italy they suspected of Dark activity (a man they had been tracking for months previous to that despite the fact that meanwhile Lucius Malfoy had gone prancing around the Ministry unchecked, thought Tonks in the midst of her deep stupor), the back of her head was going numb.

Andromeda did not like hair that Tonks termed "creatively dyed," and thus had imprisoned her daughter in the house for the entire afternoon, first making her turn her hair to a "proper" color, then styling it by twisting it around evil-looking chopsticks that are meant for hair. Chopsticks, Tonks decided, are only meant to be entwined in Chinese takeaway. Never hair. It was just _ungodly_, that's what it was. Anything else was just torture, which explained why the back her head felt like someone had stuck long pins in it because, well, someone had. This was how those poor little girls in China used to feel, Tonks thought. The ones that had to bind their feet until they're all deformed and could fit into those tiny little shoes. Poor kids. Poor Tonks.

Remus, she decided, had better be having a bloody awful time. He had left her there, after all, just because he was not at the mercy of monotonous middle-aged men. Sighing, Nymphadora Tonks wished to have the freedom of an unemployed werewolf. And that her hair wasn't so damn _boring._ She'd have to work on that…

* * *

Later: 

"Nymphadora, where's Remus?"

"I don't know, Mum. I lost track of him right after I talked to you." She scanned the heads sitting down at the table in the dining room. "Perhaps he's lost. For a werewolf, he's got a crap sense of direction."

"Nymphadora! Don't say that out loud!"

"What? You mean werew--"

"Shh! Just because you like to be flippant about it doesn't mean you should yell it to the entire room."

Tonks rolled her eyes. Whenever she was around her mother, she was always inexplicably too loud. "I'm not _yelling_ it. Everyone already knows, in any case."

Andromeda eyed her daughter warily. "I don't think it's the sort of _thing_ that should be discussed in _public._"

Tonks sighed. "Mum, it's nice that you like to think the best of everyone and all, but you've got to accept that not everyone thinks as well of Remus as you do. Some are the type that think...you know, that he can tell what they had for breakfast by sniffing their collars."

Andromeda's eyes widened. "He _can_?"

"Well, no, not unless the person in question is a particularly sloppy eater, but the point is people _think_ he can, and it drives him nuts."

Then, much to Tonks' surprise, Andromeda raised an eyebrow. "He's told you this?"

"We-ell, not in so many words, no. But I can tell it does. I mean, he's a _person_, not a bloody bloodhound. And if people don't _treat_ you like a person, like you're some awful hybrid of the two, well, then, no wonder Remus is probably in the library right now looking at Dad's books. Can you really blame him?"

Andromeda looked rather shocked. "I, well--"

Sensing she was treading in the murky gray water that accompany these sorts of issues, Tonks added hastily, "Never mind, Mum, forget I said anything. He'll turn up when he gets hungry." Tonks paused. "You see, there, I just made another inadvertent bloodhound comparison. I'm getting just as bad." She shook her head and sat down, and thus was not able to see Remus entering the dining room accompanied by a small girl in a party dress.

"It's my father who named me," Prudence Katherine was telling him as they sat down.

"Oh?"

"Yes. He likes the Beatles, you see."

"Oh."

Prudence Katherine's face was round and chubby, rather like her mother's, with a mouth that was given naturally given to pouting, which was what it did now.

"It's a rather odd choice in names," said Remus. "Would you like some potatoes? I mean, given the variety. There's Rita. Or Lucy. Or Michelle. Even Penny, I suppose, if you wanted to be--oh no, am I upsetting you?"

"No," said P.K. in a long-suffering voice, "except maybe they should've just named me 'Walrus' and stopped all the arguing. And I don't like green beans." She pushed the dish away.

"It's not _that_ bad." Remus took the green beans from her. "Believe me, I've seen worse."

"People say that all the time," said Prudence. "They say they've met people with worse names, but _I've_ never met them."

"What about Tonks?"

"You mean _Nymphadora_? I've always wondered why she goes by Tonks. It's so _boyish_. What about her?"

"Well, she's got nothing but 'Nymphadora' and her, as you say, rather boyish surname to fall back on, doesn't she?"

P.K. rolled her eyes, indicating that however bad someone else's problems were, they were nowhere near as bad as hers. She was a curious child, self-centered and full of herself, but at the same time very precocious and quite nosy.

"What do you do?" she asked.

"I used to be a teacher."

"Why aren't you anymore?"

"Personal problems." That sounded better than 'problems of a canine nature.'

"So what do you now?"

"I'm...chronically unemployed."

She peered at him as if he was a rare type of bird not seen very often. "Really? Mum says the unemployed are a bunch of lazy bums."

"Are you sure you don't want any of these beans? They're quite good." She shook her head emphatically and was quiet for a while. Finally, she asked another question. "It was Tonks who invited you here?"

"Yes."

"Are you her boyfriend?"

"Goodness no, I just live in her dead cousin's house."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, the place itself is quite decrepit, but the rent is very cheap. In fact, it's nonexistent. It was an important consideration, me being chronically unemployed and all."

"Why don't you just get a job?"

"Personal problems. You're too young to care, really."

Prudence Katherine dropped her fork on her plate with a clatter. "You know, I hate when people assume I'm too young. I'm _not_. My teachers even tell me I'm very smart. I get the best marks in the class. I'm unique too because my mum's a witch but I go to Muggle school. It's 'cos my dad's a Muggle. It's really rare, though." She smiled slyly. "The Oblivators have had to come in ten times when I slipped something about magic."

"_Ten _times? What did you say?"

"Just little things about the Floo and my parents and stuff like that."

"Ten times, though! You don't think that's a little excessive?"

"The Ministry _does_ wish Mum and Dad would just give it up and take me out of the Muggle school, but I always insist. Besides, they're just honest accidents. Usually." She waggled her eyebrows at him conspiratorially.

Remus stared at her. "You mean you've had people _purposely_ Oblivated? But why?"

She shrugged. "It was just Tommy Bradford, and he deserved it, believe me. If you knew him you'd agree."

"Do your parents--I mean, do they know?" he asked, not realizing what a stupid question it was until too late.

She snorted. "Yeah, sure. Hi Mum." Her mother had just appeared behind her chair.

She looked at her daughter, then looked at Remus, and then looked disapproving. "P.K., where's your father?"

"He got called away," said Remus, "by his office. It was quite urgent and he didn't have time to find you, so he asked me to watch P.K. to make sure she didn't get into...er, trouble."

"I don't why he worries so much about that," P.K. said, annoyed again.

"I couldn't imagine why either," said Remus.

* * *

"I know this is going to sound a little callous," said Tonks after dinner, "but you really were an awful dinner guest." 

"How so?"

"You ditched me, for one thing. Left me with Dawlish. Minus big points for that. What's worse, you ditched me to spend time with Satan incarnate--"

"Hey now, now that _is_ callous. And besides, it wasn't really intentional. I mean, I started talking to her father. He's a--"

"Doormat. Good Lord, these things _hurt_," said Tonks as she tried very hard to pull one of the chopsticks out of her hair. All she had succeeded in was moving it around so it stuck straight up out of the complicated hairstyle her mother had put in hours earlier. She looked rather, Remus thought, like she had a mast. He thought of pointing this out to her, but then decided she didn't look in the mood.

"Well, yes, I suppose you could say he's a doormat. I was going to say a Muggle. He's a very nice fellow, anyway. But he gets this call and it's very urgent, and he can't find P.K.'s mother, of course, so I told him that I'd make sure she didn't put poison in people's drinks or whatever it is you think that she does when nobody's around." He stared out the window for a second. "I didn't say those words exactly, obviously."

"I figured." She leaned over and opened the window to let in the breeze coming off the lake.

"You see," she went on a few minutes later when the silence had passed over into "just plain embarrassing" territory, "it was just a rather disappointing evening. I told Percy Weasley how well his family's doing, and although most of it's a bit of a lie I enjoyed watching him look uncomfortable. The red ears really go well with his hair."

Remus grinned a little bit.

"I mean, obviously the Weasleys are fine in the sense that they're all not dead, but they're all sort of..."

"On the 'Mortal Peril' side of things," Remus finished for her.

"Exactly..." she leaned her head out the window, closing her eyes. Remus saw that in the midst of the dismal-colored, somewhat un-Tonks like brown of her hair there was a strand of hot pink on the underside of her head. He grinned a bit more.

FIN


End file.
